Locals gear up for upcoming Boston Comic Con

Monday

Aug 4, 2014 at 12:01 AM

By Chris BergeronDaily News Staff

FRAMINGHAM - At Bedrock Comics, Lee Middlekauf picked through a box of back issues, looking for copies of "Fantastic Four" and "Captain Marvel" for his collection.A middle school art teacher in New Hampshire, he’s been reading comics since the second grade and thinks their story lines are "becoming darker’’ as "hyper-real art’’ replaces text found in speech balloons."Comics mirror everything. Nowadays there’s more art and less words. It’s like the world today with Facebook and iPhones,’’ said Middlekauf. "One thing has always been true of comics: As the world gets tougher, people want heroes.’’Farther back in the Rte. 9 store, George Viana checks out new issues of "X-Men" and "The Walking Dead," comics with characters he "can relate to.’’The 23-year-old Framingham resident always enjoyed earlier comics like "The Avengers" but now feels characters in the "The Walking Dead" have become "more relatable’’ as they grapple with "the moral dilemmas of starting a new society’’ in a post-apocalyptic world."They ask themselves: What will we hold as sacred? How will we treat our criminals?’’ said Viana, an artist who recently earned a liberal arts degree from MassBay Community College. "Comics are darker now and explore lots of moral conflicts. I can relate to the characters because they make human mistakes when they’re trying to figure out moral dilemmas.’’Behind the counter, owner Jack LeFevra said he’s having "one of our best years ever’’ with sales pumped by high-profile movies such as "Godzilla,’’ "Guardians of the Galaxy,’’ and "Captain America.’’In 1981, he was a 13-year-old kid when he walked into Jim Talbot’s downtown Framingham store, That’s Entertainment, looking for copies of "Teen Titans." He started working there and bought the store in 1997 that later moved to Rte. 9 where it offers hundreds of titles and tens of thousands of back issues.For more than 30 years, LeFevra, of Holliston, has been one of the most visible purveyors of a comic book universe with characters as memorable to their readers as Shakespeare’s sage patriarchs and malevolent villains were to Elizabethan audiences. He will be organizing volunteers for the upcoming Boston Comic Con, running from Aug. 8 to 10 at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston.Co-founded by Talbot, who still works at Bedrock, and Nick Kanieff, of Framingham, Boston Comic Con has grown in eight years from about 900 visitors to an expected 35,000 next week.A framed photo on the wall shows starlet Laurie Holden, who plays a survivor of a global zombie plague in "The Walking Dead," posing with LeFevra’s teenage son, Connor, at a recent Comic Con.Over the years, LeFevra believes comics have become "edgier, darker, more complex,’’ reflecting social anxieties during the War on Terror as the art grows more spectacular with "full page flashes’’ of violent action without much text.And he observed that comic book publishers have kept apace with the growing digital world as many titles can be purchased with art for e-book readers. He looked askance at this development."There’s no way a comic is going to be as good on an iPad,’’ said LeFevra picking up a back issue of "Conan.’’ "You can pick it up and smell the pages.’’For Professor Joshua Cohen, comics "have moved into the mainstream where they’re breaking down the barriers between pop art and high art.’’An associate professor of liberal arts at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, he has chaired panel discussions on comics and graphic novels, which he considers "a fair barometer – but not the only barometer – of the mood of our times.’’Rather than replace written works by Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky, he believes comics and graphic novels are "a compact form of literacy that reflects the trends of our time and the speed with which we now process information.’’Though some worry comics undermine reading, Cohen said images are "an old form of literacy’’ and said, "People have been telling stories with pictures from prehistoric cave paintings to Egyptian hieroglyphics to Mayan glyphs.’’"An image conveys something to the human system of understanding,’’ he said, citing the medieval Bayeux Tapestry that depicts the Norman conquest of England. "Images do things words don’t and vice versa.’’At Rubber Chicken Comics in Bellingham, owner Jay Pillarella believes the general ambiance of comic books has oscillated "back and forth’’ from "grim and gritty’’ anti-heroes like Todd McFarlane’s Spawn in the 1990s to clearer conflicts between good and evil in the 21st century after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.While a few publishers, such as DC Comics, still follow a self-regulating "code’’ that bans graphic violence and sexuality, a growing number of independents "have been pushing the envelope’’ in ways that attract some fans but trouble critics who worry about the impact on young readers.Pillarella, who stocks an estimated 100,000 issues, believes the proliferation of titles by strong writers with strong art now provides "something for everyone.’’"People are more aware of comics today. We have something for every demographic,’’ he said. "Comics got me reading regular novels. It’s still a fun hobby.’’Jake Johnston, who with two partners opened The Hall of Comics in Southborough last April, believes the growing number of new titles "reflect the modern sensibility and lifestyle changes.’’He stocks "Ms. Marvel,’’ a new comic about a teenage Muslim girl with shape-shifting powers, "Optic Nerve’’ by Adrian Tomine with stories about Asian-Americans and "Alex + Ada," about a human’s relationship with a female android that addresses "how we interact with technology.’’"Comics have survived for a long time because they’re not written in a bubble. They live and breathe our lives,’’ said Johnston. "People like myself who love comics see these stories as part of a magical world. When we finish one comic, we don’t want it to end."Contact Chris Bergeron at cbergeron@wickedlocal.com or 508-626-4448. Follow us on Twitter @WickedLocalArts and on Facebook.